In service of the queen

Fine, thank you, apart from being savaged by a corgi. Since my old dog died I have taken to walking the streets rather than the hills and falling in love with other people’s dogs. Of course it is different meeting dogs without a dog of my own. When dogs and people meet, each species goes to its own kind. The dogs sniff each other’s genitals while the people comment on the weather, though it amounts to the same thing. In both cases coded signals are being transmitted that no other species can read.

Under level 4 lockdown I was not supposed to pat dogs for fear that they might be vectors of the virus and by and large I complied with the rule. By ‘‘by and large’’ I mean when the owner of the dog hauled it away.

I justified patting dogs on the grounds that the benefits to my mental health and possibly the dog’s outweighed the risk to physical health. Epidemiologically I was probably right. Morally, of course, I was merely selfserving, but then that’s what morality’s for.

I try not to judge dogs by breed. Breeds are developed by unnatural selection to serve human purposes. The dogs have nothing to do with it. Crufts is a showcase for eugenicists.

If Covid-19 wiped us out, breeds of dog would soon follow. Within a few generations all dogs would be the size of the nameless mongrel on offer at every pound in the country. It is for this reason that small dogs behave as though they were much bigger dogs. Dogs don’t know we’ve messed with them.

Some breeds gain unearned reputations. On one walk I bumped into a bull terrier. It’s the ugliest dog on earth, the Bill Sykes beast with a snout like an aubergine. I have known four bull terriers. Each was a darling, the sort of dog you would happily let sleep with your first-born infant. I asked the owner whether people were wary of his dog. He said he didn’t know because when he was out with it he never met anyone.

In general, breed matters little. There are good dogs and less good dogs and by an extraordinary coincidence they seem to belong respectively to good and less good owners. But then there are corgis. It may well be that there are thousands of corgis out there that are as calm and charming as a nun on diazepam but I have not met one. Every corgi I’ve known has been as snappy as a turtle. Perhaps it has to do with being given the body of a dog but the legs of a hamster.

This particular corgi caught sight of me as it emerged from a garden gate and, to the extent that a corgi is capable of charging, charged.I stood my ground and sought to pacify the beast by offering it cooing noises and the back of my hand to sniff. The corgi ploughed through both and latched onto the leg of my track pants with a view to worrying it to death.

When the owner had finally detached his dog and offered apologies that suggested considerable prior experience I went on my way wondering. And what I wondered about was the queen.

I thought of all the creeps and Trumps and pompous Johnsons that the queen’s had to be polite to for 90 years and I wondered whether her choice of dog was an expression of the royal id that has no other vent. As the corgis rip into yet another tailored trouser leg, is the queen silently cheering them on? I’d like to think so.